“Will you send me dick pics?”
“Definitely. Does it have to bemydick?”
“Yours is the only one I want to see.”
He pulls me against him. “Would you like an early-access preview?”
I wrap my arms around his neck and lean the full length of my body against him. “Definitely.”
ChapterEleven
The next morning, I wake to the blare of my alarm and slap the machine with one lazy hand. I’m due at the casino in an hour to lead my regular class. Evangeline wants me to stop by her office beforehand to discuss something. It promises to be a full day. Only problem is, I can hardly keep my eyes open. Seven and I stayed up most of the night, making love and talking in between. It’s becoming harder and harder for me to leave at a reasonable hour each night, and our late-night interludes leave me feeling like a zombie.
“Need coffee,” I whisper, rolling myself off the bed and using my desk to hold myself up while my feet hit the floor. I drag my robe from the back of the chair and wrap it around me. Dressing will have to wait until my worship of the goddess caffeine is completed and her celestial gift of alertness is bestowed.
I’m halfway to the stairs when a sniffle from Arden’s room interrupts my zombie trudge toward the kitchen. Backing up a few steps, I peek through the crack of Arden’s partially closed door. She’s still in bed, but her hands are covering her face. It looks like… she’s weeping. Although she’s trying her best to remain silent, her chest and shoulders shudder with her muffled sobs.
I push the door open. “Arden?”
She wipes her face with her hands and then tries to hide beneath the covers. “Mom, I’m sleeping. What do you want?”
I cross to her bed and sit beside her, rubbing her shoulder. “I want to know why you’re crying, and if there’s anything I can do to make it better.”
The blanket slides from her features and she blinks wet green eyes at me, the same shade of emerald as her father’s. All those years I thought her father was human and that those green eyes had come from some ancestor on his side when the truth of her lineage was right in front of me.
My heart gives a painful squeeze. “I think I know what this is about, Arden. Nothing you say to me will ever make me love you any less. Whatever you decide about your future, I have your back.” I stroke her hair from her face. “Is this about you deciding you want to leave Devashire? It’s okay if you do. You’ve known what you wanted to do your whole life. You can still follow your dreams. I would never hold you back.” I can feel myself start to ramble, but I can’t stop. “We’ll still see each other. We’ll FaceTime and you’ll come here to visit—”
“Mom, stop!” Slowly she draws back the blanket and reveals her left wrist. My breath catches in my throat. A crisp Yule ball red ribbon is tied there. I flash back to the day Seven tied a similar ribbon around my wrist. That ribbon has meaning here. A boy had to rent a sleigh for the Yule parade to get it, and he had to choose her to be his date. Choosing this early in the year is a serious commitment.
“Arden, where did you get that?”
She chews her lip. “His name is Edmund. Mom, he’s a leprechaun, and he asked me to the Yule ball.”
“The Yule ball is in December. It’s June. Will you even be here in December? Are you planning to come back for the event?” My skin feels too tight, and my gut is telling me the other shoe is yet to drop.
Her eyes never leave mine, but a stack of books on her desk falls over and the pen that rested on the top rolls across the floor and stops near the bed. She reaches down and swipes it from the floor.
“You did that?” I look at her with pure awe.
She nods. “I have luck, and I can use it. Edmund has been helping me practice some of the same things Seven is teaching me. We were friends before, but we’ve grown close the past few weeks. He asked me to the ball yesterday.”
Suddenly uneasy, I shift and hold up a hand. “Wait. Did you tell him what you are, honey?” My voice sounds high and tight. Leprechauns do not normally ask human hybrids to the ball. Seven and I were the exception, and that was a disaster. But we’d known each other since childhood. Seven and I have spent so much time and effort protecting Arden’s secret. What if she hasn’t protected it herself?
“He doesn’t know who my father is,” Arden says. “He doesn’t even know I’m part leprechaun. All he knows is that I just discovered I have luck. I’m sure he assumes it came from you. My teachers did.”
“Your teachers know?”
“Before I graduated, I used it in class with the other kids. Anyway, I’m going to need all the luck I can muster if I’m to have any chance of getting into Elderflame University.” She hands me the pen, and I stare at the Elderflame logo on the side. “I’ve already talked to an admissions councilor.”
My mouth works like a fish’s. “It… it sounds like you’ve made up your mind already. Are you sure about this? You’re not just doing this for some boy, are you?”
She snorts incredulously. “No. Mom, please. I’d never.”
“It just seems… sudden.”
She shakes her head. “Not really. I was already considering staying before I knew about Seven.”
My eyes narrow. “What? Why?”
